Through the lens of Robin Prodanovich shaping his last board (around the 40,000th of his career), Todd Prodanovich reports on how surfing is losing its greatest generation of high-production handshapers, and what will happen to the culture and practice of building surfboards once they’re gone.

“At some point in the not-too-distant future, we will be living in a world in which the greatest generation of handshapers that ever lived is no longer able to contribute to the craft. To be clear: As a discipline, handshaping itself isn’t going anywhere. While mass-production handshapers have been replaced by machines, a new breed of boutique board builders continues to connect surfers to our lineage of craftsmanship, even in the Costco era.

“But handshaping is a different game now, with different incentives, and it produces both different boards and different board builders. Never again will a shaper need, or want, to produce 40,000 surfboards by hand in their career. So how will our craft culture change when this motherlode of experience is no longer there to be mined?”

Read “The Last One” in full here:
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